Formal construction and imperfect forms, time and consciousness are just a few territories that Samson Young (b. 1979, lives and works in Hong Kong) explores in his first solo exhibition in Italy. Renowned for a practice that weaves multicultural paradigms and cross-media experiences, the artist takes a group of works that he created during a residency at the Ryosoku-In at the Kennin-ji temple [1] the oldest zen temple in Kyoto—as a point of departure for Closer Reading. During those weeks, Young carried on his ongoing research on what form and its rethinking are.

At ORDET, Young deploys video, drawings, sound works and installations to generate an articulated, absorbing environment. Each work is connected and at the same time reveals its uniqueness in the hope of unveiling some fundamental beliefs about the way things work. There are different truths that await exploration. The video installation Sonata (2020, revised 2021) is a sequence of actions and images with a sense of a general direction and a recurring motif, in a choreography of events happening in time and space. A few objects complete the installation: a group of light clay pieces bear on their surface indented impressions of architectural features of the temple and a book of Zen scriptures with a circle drawn on it.

Closer Reading is on view through April 17 @ ORDET Via Adige 17, 20135 Milan